The Sinheung-dong Japanese-style house, commonly known as the Hirotsu House, was built by Hirotsu Keisaburo, a Japanese resident of colonial Gunsan who ran a textile shop and a small farming operation and served on the Gunsan municipal advisory council. It's a substantial two-story wooden structure — two L-shaped buildings joined together, finished with wood board siding over traditional wattle-and-daub walls, with a Japanese-style garden set between the two wings. The Sinheung-dong neighborhood surrounding the house was, at the time, home to Gunsan's Japanese elite.
After Japan's 1945 defeat, the house was classified as enemy property and transferred to Korea Flour Mills, and in 2005 it was designated National Registered Cultural Heritage No. 183; the city of Gunsan now manages and maintains public access to it. Countless Korean films and TV dramas — including *The General's Son* and *Tazza* — have used it as a filming location. This is a house many visitors will already recognize from a screen, and here they can actually walk through its rooms. But the elegant wooden architecture and manicured garden are also worth reading as a physical record of exactly how colonial-era wealth accumulated at the top.